


There Is No War In Phandalin

by agentaace



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Gen, it's an avatar au everybody!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 20:31:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15714564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentaace/pseuds/agentaace
Summary: With Davenport gone, Lucretia embarks on the journey to find the next Avatar. Who better to help than the world's best detective? As long as she can avoid the Raven Queen's attention while she works, she can fix what she's done and reclaim her family.





	There Is No War In Phandalin

**Author's Note:**

> For Taziversary! I panicked this morning finding something to post, but here we are!
> 
> Edit 8/23/18: Changed the title because it was terrible and killing me inside, for the record it used to be Angus McDonald and the Mystery of Himself. Which is just garbo! Don't know if this one's better, feel free to suggest something else!

Lucretia needed to find the Avatar. She needed to. Since Davenport died, and all of her friends were lost, the search for the Avatar was all she had left. Her surviving team had been scattered, and there wasn’t any point in finding them if they wouldn’t remember her anyway. So finding the Avatar was the only option.

But the Avatar, being only nine, or perhaps ten, was unsurprisingly proving very difficult to find. She would need help. So here she was, with a freshly hired boy-detective, best one around. Angus McDonald peered around the busy streets, notebook and pen in hand.

“You’re positive that the Avatar is a waterbender?” Angus confirmed, glancing back at Lucretia.

“Yes. And they should be around nine years old,” She reminded him with a nod. He looked at her doubtfully.

“I’m still going to need a source on that one, ma’am. There’s no record of what happened to the last one, not for decades. There’s really no way to tell how old they would be,” Angus said, shifting his attention back to the Neverwinter streets as he spoke.

“If you say so, detective,” Lucretia shrugged. Angus flashed a smile at her while he wrote down more notes, almost indecipherable in the messy scrawl of a young detective.

“We should go to the library,” Angus decided, already taking off down the road. Lucretia indulged him and followed, arriving in front of a grand building with stone columns and only the slightest dusting of snow on the slanted roof. Angus opened the door and slid off his shoes, placing them carefully by the door, and dashed off to the books without hesitation. After copying his actions, brushing the snow off her coat as well, Lucretia trailed after him into the maze of shelves. This was undoubtedly the largest library in the entire Northern Water Tribe, and exponentially larger than the ones in the Southern Water Tribe Lucretia was used to.

“Do you think someone’s written a book about the current Avatar?” She asked skeptically.

“Probably not,” Angus admitted, “But there might be one on the last one. And if there is, I’ll find it super fast! I know this library like the back of my hand!” With that, Angus put back the book he’d been flipping through, and raced off down the aisle. Luckily there was no librarian to notice his behavior. Having only met the kid yesterday, Lucretia was still having some doubts about him. But his reputation preceded him, and everyone who had worked with him agreed he was absolutely the best around. ...Not that there were that many detectives in the Northern Water Tribe to begin with, and therefore not much competition, but hey. He was doing alright so far.

But Lucretia hadn’t exactly hired Angus for his detectiving. She’d hired him because she knew that he was actually the Avatar, even if he didn’t. But she didn’t plan on telling him in the near future, because Lucretia had a habit of keeping secrets for people’s own good.

But her current plan was half baked at best. She’d been driven by her desire to see her friend, her leader, again, and hadn’t prepared for what would happen when she actually found him. Davenport was gone, replaced with an enthusiastic boy detective. She already loved Angus, of course, as it was hard not to get attached after the first time meeting him. She just didn’t know what she had been expecting.

She found him again buried in a book, one discussing the four elements and their uses, judging by the cover. Angus was frowning heavily at it, brows furrowed in concentration. He heard her approach and glanced up from where he was sitting cross legged on the floor.

“How many languages do you know?” he asked. Lucretia bent down, looking at the book he was holding. “I can’t read this chapter at all. What language even is it?” he asked, growing frustrated.

“Let me see,” Lucretia requested. Angus handed the book over like he was angry with it, for not sharing its knowledge with him. Lucretia read, in perfect Common, ‘The Avatar, born of air, both started and ended the Spirit War. Aided by an elite team of benders and nonbenders alike, he banished the spirits from this world, costing him his life in the process…’ Lucretia’s eyes widened, and she flipped the cover to see who the author was. However, it was uncredited.

“You can read it?” Angus pressed curiously, reading her face. It clicked in her mind, then, why Angus was confused. It probably looked like whatever the visual form of static was, to him, and his mind rationalized it as an obscure language he’d never seen before.

“I can read some,” Lucretia half-lied. “It’s an explanation of the Avatar. I don’t think it’s important.” If she said more, then Angus would have heard only static, leading to too many questions that she couldn’t answer. Which would be the opposite of progress.

Of course, Angus was a bit smarter than she gave him credit for, and gave her a skeptical look. He took the book back and tried to read it once more, frowning deeply. “Okay. If you say so,” he said, putting it back onto the shelf. He didn’t move to get up, and instead rested his head in his hand as he thought. “Still no leads,” he mumbled into his palms.

“We might look elsewhere. Perhaps outside of the Northern Water Tribe?” Lucretia suggested. She wanted to see what he could do, if he really could solve the ‘mystery.’ When he could discover it on his own, he would be ready for it. In an ideal world, he wouldn’t have to deal with this until he was sixteen. But Lucretia wasn’t taking the chance of her enemies rising again while the avatar was missing. She needed to start training him, at least doing something, now.

“Hmm… Yeah, you’re right,” Angus sighed, like he’d already resigned himself to that conclusion. “We’d have to be gone for a while, right?” Lucretia nodded, curious to what he was thinking. “Well, it’s not my first time leaving Neverwinter on a case. I’ll talk to my grandpa, then.” He picked himself off the ground, holding out a hand. “We’ll meet up later. Bye, Lucretia!” He shook her hand and ran off, sliding on his shoes before dashing outside.

“How did you…” Lucretia started, once she shook off the shock. But he’d already gone. She hadn’t told him her name. She’d introduced herself as the Director, as she always did nowadays, and the only other detail she’d shared about herself was that she was from the Southern Water Tribe.

Maybe ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ wasn’t just a title, after all. Lucretia picked up the book Angus had been trying to decipher, and read more of what the spirits had erased from the rest of the world. There wasn’t much information here, and it didn’t mention any names. It did discuss the Spirit War, in vague details, talking a bit about how the four elements, plus spirit, were almost hopelessly out of balance since the queen of the fire nation had allied with evil spirits to not only increase the power of her own element, but nearly eradicate all other elements. She’s the reason airbenders were so hard to find in the modern age.

Lucretia decided that she’d gotten everything she could out of the book, (not like it was new information anyways,) and put it back. She slipped her shoes back on, and left the library.

“Who’s the boy?” A voice asked, with a weird, but thick, cockney accent. Lucretia sighed, and turned to continue walking down the street.

“None of your business,” she said tersely. A dark figure fell into step beside her, casual but still threatening enough to keep her guard up.

“Is he what you’ve been looking for for so long?” The man asked.

“Look. Kravitz, is it? I’m getting tired of you following me around. Do you want to get some tea? Talk things over?” Lucretia asked, glancing to her side. He seemed startled, and took a step away from her.

“Really? You want to get tea?” he asked incredulously. “Why?”

“It’s silly we’ve never had a real conversation before, when we’ve been around each other for so long.”

“...I’ve been stalking you on orders from one of your enemies. What makes you think I want to talk?” Kravitz asked, still completely baffled.

Lucretia couldn’t hide a small smile. “No offense, but you’re not particularly good at your job. You don’t even seem to enjoy it all that much. Let’s just have a nice chat. I might even have other employment options for you to consider. What do you say?” She turned to face him directly, even if she couldn’t see his eyes with his hood falling over his face.

“I… No, I shouldn’t. I mean, I can’t. That’s absurd,” Kravitz regained his composure and confidence, remembering what he was doing in the first place. “If you won’t tell me who that child is yourself, I’ll find out some other way. Goodbye, Madam Director.”

“Goodbye, Kravitz,” Lucretia said with a smile and a small wave as he swished his cloak and vanished, presumably into a nearby alleyway. He really wasn’t that good at his job. No matter how hard he tried to be threatening, and at the very least menacing, after encountering him only a few times Lucretia had learned he was nothing to be afraid of. Still, she’d keep her guard up anyways. It would be stupid to forget who he was working for.

His boss was something to be very afraid of. But until she came after Lucretia herself, there was no threat from her. Kravitz had no clue the reason he was keeping tabs on Lucretia, after all, besides merely following the orders to keep track of her and what she was doing. And if Kravitz had no real motive for doing anything to harm Lucretia, then he wouldn’t, as it would be against his conscience.

This Lucretia had learned after years of the Raven Queen trying and failing to figure out what she was doing. Always on the move, traversing the entire earth continent as well as both water tribes, even dipping into the old air temples, Lucretia was very good at keeping her motives and goals secret. Sometimes even she herself didn’t know what she was doing, what the point of this was.

Lucretia was still in the mood for tea, though, with or without company. However that would have to wait for now. If she and Angus were going to leave, preferably today, then they would need some supplies. And she’d have to get them without tipping Kravitz off as to where they were going, and why. That could prove difficult.

Even now she could feel a pair of eyes still watching her.

**Author's Note:**

> This will stay as a simple concept for now. I've written a little more of this but I probably won't post it, because then it'll get into this whole long thing that I'll have to actually finish! That being said, I have put A LOT of thought into this AU, so come find me on tumblr @robinheartz if you want to talk about it or hear more!


End file.
